Yapta helps travelers secure airfare refunds

Even though its headquarters building caught on fire early Monday morning, Seattle online travel startup Yapta is still pushing ahead with a new online service that helps people track airfares and receive refunds from airlines if ticket prices drop below the original purchase price.

Here’s how it works:

Yapta users download a small piece of free software, allowing them to “tag” or “bookmark” specific flight details that they locate on various travel Web sites.

For example, a Yapta user who visited the Web sites of Expedia, Jet Blue or Delta Airlines would be able to save specific flight details from each with the click of a button. That information is then saved to a separate Web page, operated by Yapta, where users can compare all flight data obtained from previous travel searches. As the prices for the individual flights change, Yapta sends e-mail alerts to users notifying them that it may be a good time to buy. It also goes a step further, telling users that a refund may be available from the airline if the price of the ticket slips below the original purchase price.

Online shoppers are spending hours researching flights on various Web sites, but Yapta Chief Executive Tom Romary says they have no central repository in which to store the data. Yapta will attempt to change that by creating what he calls a “comparative shopping environment” on one centralized Web page.

“The analog today is that you go from site to site and you write down on paper or a Post-It note flight numbers and prices,” he said. “Then you go back and check again and write it down again. Some people I talk to use spreadsheets. But there really was no place to keep all of this in a simple environment.”

An interesting twist, and one that could land Yapta in hot water, is the fact that the company has not partnered with any of the travel sites. Once the consumer downloads the Yapta software, the buttons simply start appearing directly inside the search results on the travel Web sites. At launch, the company’s buttons will appear below the itineraries on about a dozen major travel sites, including Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia as well as the sites of airlines like American, Continental and Alaska Airlines.

Henry Harteveldt, a vice president at Forrester Research who studies the online travel marketplace, said that Yapta is a potentially disruptive technology that could raise the ire of online travel agencies.

“It will be very interesting to see how the other side responds,” said Harteveldt. “As long as this is done where it is viewed as an overlay and not affecting anyone else’s intellectual property, it is OK. I am assuming that Yapta and its lawyers have studied this and have constructed this so that it will be used in such a way that it is not interfering with the performance of an Expedia or an United.com.”

Operating in stealth mode for nearly a year, Romary said they have not approached any of the big travel agencies about the product. Still, the 41-year-old former marketing executive at HouseValues and Alaska Airlines admits that they will have to “zig and zag” through the online travel market.

“I don’t think that Expedia will like us at all,” he said. “We are not in this for Expedia. We are doing this for consumers to give them an application that helps them plan travel.”

Romary said that the Yapta service will not interfere with the experience on Expedia or any other travel Web site, adding that people who hit the button can “keep on shopping” on those Web sites.

Representatives from Orbitz did not return calls or e-mails, while a spokeswoman for Expedia was not familiar with Yapta. Joel Frey, a spokesman at Travelocity, said in an e-mail statement that they could not comment specifically about Yapta. But Frey said in the statement that there are already a number of airfare alert products in the market, including the company’s own FareWatcher system.
One big difference, however, is that Yapta allows users to save searches from multiple providers, including airlines like Southwest and Jet Blue that don’t make their flight information available to the large online travel agencies.

Yapta also is touting a program in which it will help consumers access refunds from airlines if they end up overpaying for a flight purchased through the carriers’ Web site. Romary said that many airlines – looking to maintain strong ties to travelers – offer guaranteed airfare rules in which they promise a refund if the price drops. He said many people are unaware of those programs, but travelers could save a lot of money if they pursued them.

Just last week, Seattle online travel startup Farecast unveiled an e-mail alert service that offers predictions about whether prices will be going up or down on selected routes. While there are some similarities, Romary said Yapta can “stack up” the exact flights that consumers are interested in purchasing. That could be a non-stop to Atlanta on Delta that leaves at 11:30 p.m. from Seattle, alerting people when that specific flight drops in price.

“Everyone has alerts of some kind, but this is really the first time that anyone has offered a flight-specific alert,” he said.

Yapta plans to make money through targeted advertising, with users who tag trips to Hawaii or Mexico possibly receiving ads related to hotels or restaurants in those locations. It also will drive some revenue by passing leads on to the airlines.

If it catches on, Romary admits that the Yapta service could shake up the industry.

“Anytime there is a consumer opportunity and a consumer pain point in a big market, it means there is a chance to disrupt the market and provide an innovative solution,” he said. “As long as we are focused on the consumer need, I think we are going to succeed.”